F A M I L Y F U N I N S A N T A Y N E Z
My wife, Gail, and I took a short vacation to Santa Ynez and we stopped at OstrichLand (610 E Hwy 246, between Buellton and Santa Ynez.) It is quaint mix between tourist trap and a roadside zoo.
For a four dollar fee they let you visit a couple dozen Ostriches and a similar number of Emus. It turns out the Ostriches are the largest bird on the planet sometimes making it to nine feet tall. They come from Africa. The Emus are smaller but prettier with blue necks and they come from Australia.
For an extra dollar you can feed them, and they all seem to be voracious consumers of Ostrich pellets – something like bunny food. And they are quick to try to pull the food bowl out of your hands. When those big bobbing heads and wide beaks lunge at the food it is not for the faint of heart. We watched kids, and even teenagers, quickly turn the feeding the Ostrich duty over to the parents. The kids were too scared of Big Bird.
And talk about cute! You can visit the miniature horses at Quicksilver Farms at 1555 Alamo Pintado every day except Sunday. Spring is foaling time and the baby horses are running around. It is a great place to take the kids, or yourselves, and Santa Ynez is a fine get-away.
The Market
This newsletter lists 9 Mesa sales in the past month, and there are 19 homes in escrow. There are 11 currently available. That’s a tight inventory compared to a normal availability of 25 listings in an “average” market. The Mesa market is moving upward at a10 percent rate while the overall market along the South Coast is plateauing. In April one out of eight listings got multiple offers. That is down from three out of eight listings in 2013.
However, the urge to splurge for an expensive home has hit Hope Ranch and Montectio and some of our more expensive Santa Barbara neighborhoods. It is actually hard to measure the overall market because the volume of $2-3-4+ million home sales has gone up so much that it is throwing the statistics off – to the up side.
When you want to know the value of your property pick up the phone and give me a call.
Client Talk
“You were always available, know the market and went the extra mile to get the property marketable—thank you for your time and attention.”— Ina Kurland
“We first met in 1980. You were going door to door in Westwood Hills delivering your newsletter. I’ve enjoyed the newsletter all these years and that’s the reason why I called you to sell my house. Thank you for making it be a smooth process. — Sue Reed
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